Sleepless Dad, trying to equate having a spirited conversation about a highly controversial subject in an internet chat forum, with your bizarre fantasy of walking into a church and screaming at the churchgoers is your knee jerk reaction, not mine.

At a party, if this subject came up in the conversation, I'd pull up a chair, sit down with the people talking, and leap right in.

Something wrong with that?

What I am about here, is pointing out that there is a big difference between supporting the troops by trying to get them the hell out of the bloodbath our government created and bring them home, and supporting the troops by praying they'll be victorious in the next battle in the bloodbath, in this case the Iraqi elections.

I am neither pacifist or militarist. I am a reasonable person who hates the American military establishment, and wishes my government would get out of the war business and into the human development business. I'd much rather see the troops deployed to aid tsunami victims, than "liberating" the hell out of countries our president deems "evil" by bombing them back to the Stone Age. I hate what that sort of thing does to the people being bombed AND to the people doing the bombing.